Journal Notes

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Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West

The angry hawk clenched its talons on the heavy leather gauntlet, stabbing the delicate wrist beneath.  Wings batting, the half-wild bird glared fiercely into the large, gray eyes of his captor.  Mary Anderson stared back with steely determination.  This unruly bird would be tamed, she resolved, and would become a living prop for her performance of the Countess in Sheridan Knowles’ comedy, Love.  A stuffed bird would not provide the realism she intended, and what Mary Anderson intended usually came to be.

“There is a fine hawking scene in one of the acts,” Mary wrote in her memoirs, “which would have been spoiled by a stuffed falcon, however beautifully hooded and gyved he might have been; for to speak such words as:  ‘How nature fashion’d him for his bold trade, / Gave him his stars of eyes to range abroad, / His wings of glorious spread to mow the air, / And breast of might to use them’ to an inanimate bird, would have been absurd,” she declared.  Always absolutely serious about her profession, Mary procured a half-wild bird and set to work on bending its spirit to her will.

“The training,” she explained, “started with taking the hawk from a cage and feeding it raw meat hoping thus to gain his affections.”  She wore heavy gloves and goggles to protect her eyes.  The hawk was not easily convinced of her motives, and “painful scratches and tears were the only result.”

She was advised to keep the bird from sleeping until its spirit broke, but she refused to take that course.  Persevering with the original plan, Mary continued to feed and handle the hawk until it eventually learned to sit on her shoulder while she recited her lines, then fly to her wrist as she continued; then, at the signal from her hand, the bird would flap away as she concluded with a line about a glorious, dauntless bird.

The dauntless hawk and Mary Anderson were birds of a feather.

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Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West

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The pliant figure leaned over the ship’s rail, expressive eyes intent on the blue-green waters of the harbor.  A mass of wavy, light brown hair with tints of gold lifted and curled with every breeze, its arrangement a matter of complete indifference to the angler.  Suddenly the slender form froze, breath held, and then, with a quick yank and a breaking smile, lifted the rod and hauled a wriggling fish aboard the Cabrillo.  Exclaiming in French, dark eyes sparkling with pleasure, Sarah Bernhardt ordered her catch, small as it was, to be prepared for dinner.

It was May 19, 1906, and the farewell production of Camille was scheduled for a few hours later at the ocean auditorium built on the water at Venice, California. Sarah stayed, and fished, at the hotel built like a ship, and performed in the adjacent theater on the wharf at the seaside resort, Venice of America. Having caught a fish, Sarah wended her way to her quarters. Piled high in her dressing room were the results of a recent shopping trip to the Oriental bazaar nearby:  silk and crepe matinee coats of pink and pale blue and mauve, all embroidered in butterflies and bamboo designs.

The tiny window in the dressing room provided a sparkling view of the ocean, and the streaming sunshine picked out details of the furnishings: a repoussé silver powder box, containers of pigment, eyebrow pencils, silver rouge pots, and scattered jewelry twinkling in the light. The tragedienne who attracted huge audiences wherever she went swooped up a small tan and white fox terrier, wriggling with joy at her return, and snuggled it close for a moment as she related the happy details of her fishing venture to a visiting reporter.  Then, she put down the small dog and closed her mind to the fun waiting outside the porthole.

Within moments Sarah became Marguerite Gautier, filled with the sadness and torment of the beautiful French courtesan in Camille. The play, written by Alexandre Dumas, became her signature role. She performed Camille more than 3,000 times all over the world. Sarah’s ability to sink fully into the character of the play made the tragic death scene so convincing that it became a trademark for “the Divine Sarah.”

No one played tragedy with such believable intensity as Sarah Bernhardt, and no one brought as much passion and enthusiasm to the pursuit of pleasure.  From fishing on the southern California coast to bear hunting in the woods outside Seattle, on every western tour the French actress indulged in some kind of adventure.  Sarah Bernhardt threw herself into life with the same characteristic energy she put into her stage appearances.  Yet she often slept in a coffin, preparing for that final sleep.

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Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West

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It was a cold evening in the early spring of 1859 when the well-known actress Charlotte Cushman debuted in Shakespeare’s Hamlet at the Metropolitan Theatre in San Francisco.  The city’s most wealthy and influential people arrived by carriage.  Throngs of curious bystanders eager to see the aristocrat hovered around the walkway leading into the building.  The fine, brick edifice rivaled the most notable on the East Coast.

Inside, the grand hall was fitted with the most ornate fixtures and could seat comfortably upwards to a thousand people.  From the private boxes to the gallery, every part of the immense building was crowded to excess.  Charlotte Cushman was recognized by theatre goers as the “greatest living tragic actress,” and everyone who was anyone wanted to see her perform.   Several women had won fame with their impersonations of male characters in various dramas, but critics and fans alike regarded Charlotte as the best of them all.

In 1845, a theatrical reviewer in London had written about one of Charlotte’s performances in glowing terms.  “Miss Cushman’s Hamlet must henceforth be ranked among her best performances.  Every scene was warm and animated, and at once conveyed the impression of the character.  There was no forced or elaborate attempt at feeling or expression.  You were addressed by the whole mind; passion spoke in every feature, and the illusion was forcible and perfect.”

The audience that flocked to see the exceptionally talented Charlotte in California was not only treated to a “forcible and perfect” interpretation of Hamlet, but that evening they were also treated to a display of the actress’ temper.

Charlotte and her supporting cast played to an enraptured house for the first half of the production.  Actors maneuvered themselves in and out of the elaborate set consisting of a castle and turrets standing on the right side of the stage and imposing cliffs rising out of the fog on the left side of the stage.  The simulated sounds of wind wailing through the crevices of stone and of the sea crashing against the rocky shore added to the drama.  During a particular scene between Hamlet and Ophelia, Hamlet’s intended wife, a man in the audience sneezed loudly and with a long drawn out cach-oo!

Charlotte stopped and stared at the man.  Then, quietly leading the actress playing Ophelia off the stage, she approached the footlights and said in a loud tone, “Will someone put that person out”?  Everybody sat still.  “If some gentleman doesn’t, I will,” Charlotte announced rolling up her sleeves.  The individual got up and sneaked out the theatre.  Only after the audience had turned its full attention back to Charlotte did she proceed with the play.

To learn more about Charlotte and other performers like her read

Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West

Mr. Pettigrew Premieres April 18 in Missoula, Montana

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On August 24, 1863, San Francisco’s elite flocked to Maguire’s Opera House. Ladies in diamonds and furs rode up in handsome carriages; gentlemen in opera capes and silk hats strutted in stylishly. It was an opening night such as the city had never before seen. All one thousand seats in the theatre were filled with curious spectators anxious to see the celebrated melodramatic actress Adah Menken perform.

Adah was starring in the role that made her famous, that Prince Ivan in Mazeppa. It was rumored that she preferred to play the part in the nude. Newspapers in the East reported that audiences found the scantily clad thespian’s act “shocking, scandalous, horrifying and even delightful.”  The story line of the play was taken from a Byron poem in which a Tartar prince is condemned to ride forever in the desert snipped naked and lashed to a fiery, untamed steed. Adah insisted on playing the part as true to life as possible.

The audience waited with bated breath for Adah to walk out onto the stage, and when she did, a hush fell over the crowd. She was beautiful, possessing curly, dark hair and big, dark eyes. Adorned in a flesh-colored body nylon and tight-fitting underwear, she left the audience speechless.  During the play’s climatic scene, supporting characters strapped the star to the back of a black stallion. The horse raced up the narrow runway between cardboard mountain crags. The audience responded with thunderous applause. Adah Menken had captured the heart of another city in the West.

Adah became known as “The Frenzy of Frisco,” but wanted to be the frenzy of the entire West. In 1864 she took to the road again, traveling east to Virginia City, Nevada. She opened her Virginia City show on March 2, 1864. Tickets ranged in price from $1.00 for a single seat to $10.00  for a private box.

The theater was packed on opening night. Many people were forced to stand in the aisles, and hundreds were turned away. Local critics, including a young Samuel Clemens (later to be known as Mark Twain), were present to review her performance. Adah was ushered onto the stage by thunderous applause. She brought down the house, and appreciative miners threw silver ingots at her feet. Sam Clemens was thoroughly impressed. He would return numerous times to see Adah perform.

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rEntertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West

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On a warm spring day in 1921, more than two thousand women gathered at the Fox Hollywood Studio to film the all-female chariot race for the silent picture the Queen of Sheba. As the story centered around the ill-fated romance between Solomon, King of Israel, and the Queen of Sheba the majority of the cast were dressed in Biblical garb. The women who were to be driving the chariots were adorned in colorful tunics, leather helmets, and tall, period style boots. Each were focused on the four-horse team fastened to a yoke and attached to the vehicles.

Western cowboy actor and director Tom Mix belted out instructions to the camera crew to standby to begin filming and then prompted the drivers to take their places. Among the skilled chariot drivers was World Champion All-Around Horsewoman Lorena Trickey. Trickey caught the attention of studio head, William Fox during preproduction talks for the picture. He’d read an article about the twenty-eight-year-old’s talent in the saddle and believed she would be a perfect stuntwoman. In addition to setting records in relay racing, she was also an accomplished Roman style racer. In Roman riding the rider stands atop a pair of horses, with one foot on each horse. Before the shoot was over, Mix would call on Lorena to give a demonstration for the cameras.

Not long after filming had completed on the Queen of Sheba, the rodeo star lent her expertise to a picture with Mary Pickford entitled Through the Back Door. Pickford played a young woman who moves to America from Belgium just prior to WWI to search for her mother. Most of the horseback riding stunts in the picture were performed by Trickey.

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Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West

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The green, silk robe shimmered in the light of the dressing room.  Adjusting the neckline, Lillian Russell glanced into the mirror and considered the interviewer’s question about beauties never appreciating their good looks.  “I think they do,” she countered.  “They are glad to have it, as they are grateful for the gift.  I am pleased and gratified when someone says I look nice.”

Looking “nice” was a part of the job that the corn-fed beauty from America’s heartland never forgot.  The costume she wore in the second act of Lady Teazle showed off her abundant charms to perfection.  The green silk, the large, plumed hat, and the ebony walking stick adorned with orange ribbons were but a pretty frame for the statuesque blond performer whose sumptuous exterior diverted attention from a sharp mind and a warm heart.

As she continued dressing for the second act of the play, she answered questions from Miss Ada Patterson, longtime reporter for The Theatre Magazine.  How, asked Patterson, had a girl from Iowa earned the name “America’s Beauty”? “I came away from Clinton when I was six months old, and I don’t remember much about it,” she told the reporter.  A backward glance over a smooth, white shoulder gave a glimpse of the famous smile, curving perfect lips.  A spark of mischief flashed in the beautiful, blue eyes framed by long, thick eyelashes as she added, “Although there are Tabbies who say they remember my life there when I was six months old sixty years ago.”

The feature later published in The Theatre Magazine of February 1905 never came right out and said that America’s most famous beauty was now forty-three years old.  Behind her lay phenomenal success as well as heartbreak and failure, yet none of it dimmed the glow.  The interviewer that day compared the throat and shoulders rising from the green silk to the Venus de Milo.  The pure soprano voice still hit high C with ease, and, after more than twenty-three years on stage, the name Lillian Russell still drew people to the theater.

Lillian was not only beautiful but she had an amazing voice. The following is a link to an early recording of her voice.

https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/media/recordedsound/Come-Down-Ma-Evenin-Star_Lillian-Russell.mp3

To learn more about Lillian Russell read

Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West

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A frigid wind blew hard past the weather-beaten exterior of the Palace Garden Theatre in Dawson City, Alaska.  It was the spring of 1900, and gleeful patrons were tucked warmly inside, waiting for the “Flame of the Yukon” to take the stage.

A fiery, red-headed beauty glided out before the crowd, her violent eyes smiling.  The men went wild with applause.  The music began, and the entertainer swayed with the beat, placing a gloved hand to her breast and a fingertip to her lips and then, stretching her arm out, beckoning her admirers.  The elaborate red-sequin dress she was wearing was form-fitting, and the long black cape that draped over her shoulders clung to her alabaster skin.

The piano player accelerated his playing, and Kate Rockwell gyrated gracefully in and out of the shadow of the colored lights that flickered across the stage.  After a moment, with a slight movement of her hand, she dropped the cape off her shoulders and it fell to the floor.  The glittering diamonds and rhinestones around her neck sparkled and shined.  Ever so seductively, she picked up a nearby cane adorned with more than 200 yards of red chiffon and began leaping, while twirling the fabric-covered walking stick.  Around and around she fluttered, the chiffon trailing wildly about her like flames from a fire, the material finally settling over her outstretched body.  The audience erupted in a thunderous ovation.  She was showered with nuggets and pouches filled with gold dust.  This dance would make her famous.

To learn more about Kate, the fortune she made entertaining, and what happened to her earnings read Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West

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Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West

Long before actors were vying for an Oscar nomination and world wide fame thespians were trying to carve out a modest living entertaining prospectors and settlers of the Old West. This month the curtain goes up on women entertainers who captured the hearts of the western pioneers.

Ladies and gentlemen, the immensely talented star of Peter Pan and The Lost Child, Maude Adams.

“I wish you could have seen Maudie that night. She was simply wriggling with excitement. It was all I could do to keep her in her dressing-room until the cue came for her to go on…. Just before the curtain went up I made her repeat her first-act lines to me. She had learned them like a parrot, to be sure, but she spoke them like a true little actress.”

Annie Adams’s comments about her daughter Maude’s first full performance at the age of 5 in November, 1877 at the Metropolitan Theatre in San Francisco.

The Palmer Theatre House in New York was jammed to the doors by a curious clientele all there to see the new actress working opposite the most celebrated actor of the day, John Drew. It was October 3, 1892 when the stunning, elfin-like Maude Adams took to the stage in the play “The Masked Ball.” At the end of the evening Drew would be congratulated on his admirable acting job, but Maude would score a hit that would be greater than his entire career. Her performance was so successful the applause lasted for a full two minutes after she made her exit. She was on her way to becoming a star and local newspapers predicted her talent would be talked about for years to come.

“Her performance (in the Masked Ball) was a revelation. There is one scene in the second act where in order to punish her husband for some ante nuptial remarks of his she has to pretend that she is drunk. It was just touch and go whether the scene ruined the play or not. It would have been hard to devise a more crucial test for an actress of even the wildest experience and the greatest skill. In order to carry off this scene successfully it was necessary for the wife to appear to be drunk and yet be a gentlewoman at the same time. Miss Adams achieved this feat. If Miss Adams had done nothing else throughout the entire play than that one scene it would have stamped her as a comedienne of the first order forever.” The New York Daily News – October 4, 1892

Maude Adams’s stage career began at the tender age of nine months. The play was called “The Lost Child” and the baby that was playing the lead became fussy and could not continue in the show after the first act. Maude’s mother, Annie, who was the female lead in the production, suggested her daughter take the child’s place. Maude was so good that the other baby received her two weeks notice immediately after the play ended. For the remainder of that season all the infant roles were played by little Miss Maude.

To learn more about Maude Adams and the other talented performers of the Old West read Entertaining Women: Actresses, Dancers, and Singers in the Old West.